


I'm a bullet

by Isolee



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Charles Has Issues, History student!, Infidelity, M/M, Non-powered AU, Recreational Drug Use, Seduction, Teacher/Student, University, angsty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22375321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isolee/pseuds/Isolee
Summary: Since mother - since the house - since Cain - He's adapted. He can do anything. Now he wants something, and he suspects he might even deserve it.Or - Charles is sort-of a sex addict, and Erik is his married-with-family supervisor at Uni.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Sean Cassidy/Charles Xavier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 81





	1. I'm a bullet

**Author's Note:**

> I've been listening to too much Kesha.

Winter.

The lecture hall is a stage - the lights come on with the flick of a switch, the stacked whiteboards are like curtains of icy, fluorescent blue. The hall does not shush like an audience, but the soliloquist of the afternoon ignores them regardless, like any good actor. Charles would know.

He has been chewing the end of his pencil in want of a cigarette. He stops when he gets a good look at the guest researcher just flown in from Humboldt University in Berlin. He looks him up and down, and when he is done, he has to do it again just for the painful shocks of attraction in his hands, his pulse speeding up.

Twenty minutes into the lecture on – democracy? City planning, protests? Really, it could be anything - his note pad is still empty, and he has memorised the shape of Lehnsherr's hands. The sight of a wedding ring on Lehnsherr’s left hand lands like a hit of something expensive in his blood stream.

An hour and half, and his foot is tapping against the seat in front of him, his pen spinning between his fingers, lips hurting from his teeth. He does not rightly care if Lehnsherr sees him, he still rakes his eyes that body without quenching his thirst. He cannot. The man is absolutely stunning. Endlessly better dressed than anyone else in the department. Blue suit, tailored around runner’s legs. Vest, because why the fuck not. Why the fuck not, indeed. Auburn hair, pretty eyes, steely and hard.

He wants Lehnsherr, and honestly, when Charles Xavier wants someone, they rarely remain oblivious for long.

Lehnsherr makes it easy. _Send me an email, set up an appointment. Let's talk about your thesis._

So Charles does. And when the clock strikes the hour a week later, he knocks on the door, exactly on time.

Senior lecturer Lehnsherr looks indecent in shirtsleeves rolled up and Chelseas polished. Military grade shine, Charles thinks, and smiles sweetly. He has always loved a soldier.

"Charles Xavier? Please, come in."

"Thank you."

The room, like all other offices Charles has seen at the department, is small but bright, not yet filled with books, and only has room for two small chairs and a desk. Unlike all the other offices, this one smells overwhelmingly of potential. Like clean cotton, like soap, paper, after-shave. Pine, musk, smoke, oak. All of them seem to punch into Charles’s system.

"Take a seat, Charles."

It is also unlike all other offices he has seen, because he does not usually imagine being bent over the desk with his legs spread wide within a minute of entering. Noting that Lehnsherr's thin, trendy tie is good quality silk - nothing like the polyester blends this state college is accustomed to - he adds this detail to his fantasy. Bound hands, grasping for purchase, the silk soft and burning against his wrists.

"Your thesis is on British early modern politics, you said in your email," Lehnsherr begins, at ease, calm and focused. Charles smiles timidly and pretends he is the opposite of himself.

"It is," he responds softly, crossing his legs and leaning against the cheap material of the armchair.

"Tell me more," Lehnsherr encourages, and his eyes leave Charles's face to look at his exposed ankle, only for half a second. It’s okay, Charles thinks. We can start there. It will be a challenge, but he is not afraid. He lives for a challenge. It is the foundation upon which he has built his life. Success is the best revenge and all that, but also, power is the best defence.

They meet in Lehnsherr's office several times before the course is over. No, nothing happens, other than expert guidance, not suited for these 70’s halls, these scuffed hallways, these off-off white coloured walls.

Charles makes sure to ask about the family photo on his desk, to laugh and expose his neck when Lehnsherr is being funny, and to thank him profusely for the advice. Do not write this, this suggests that, drop that, save this for a PhD, and slow down on the coffee, there.

He maintains eye contact when he smiles, and wears his best jeans rolled up, shoes low. Mentions student-housing, lets slip that he is getting by waiting tables, for all that his last name be Xavier. Professors, older men, people with money, they all have an urge to help a smart, ambitious and broke student. Working in the cheap restaurants, it is disgusting, but narratively? It is romantic, and ingrained in the cultural consciousness. He makes sure to promise to show Lehnsherr proper customer service if he stops by. He does not. It could be both a flirt and a thank-you. It is fine, but Lehnsherr will wonder. Stay in their minds, be memorable, that is how you do it.

He draws a line at talking about Marko, or Cain. Better left buried, like Mother. Like Father.

Fuck them.

Lehnsherr promises to look up stipends for him.

They develop a loose camaraderie that the older professors just cannot pull off, not without seeming creepy, or needy. Charles is made for this - they both know that he is perfect for Academia, that he will get into the PhD program, all expenses paid. Lehnsherr even lets slip a "when we're colleagues", as if it is obvious that they will be. Quite deliberately, Charles looks at his watch one afternoon and mentions his Tinder hook-up in a most by-the-by fashion. Lehnsherr wishes him luck, and smiles with shockingly white teeth that Charles want to suck, wants desperately to feel against his neck, his cock.

He takes the Tinder guy home, does not even finish his first drink.

He knows what he is doing, and it is seduction. Since mother - since the house - since Cain –

He has adapted. He can do anything. Now he _wants something_ , and he suspects he might even deserve it.

* * *

  
Spring.

It is late May when the thesis deadline is up. They meet an hour later, drinks at the Uni pub with course mates, teachers, professors, supervisors. The air is fresh, the students ecstatic. The night is warm, the feelings in his chest real and bubbling for once, even untouched by drink or drug. It has been a while. Lehnsherr is there, because he is young-ish, he is fun, and he does not even speak about his wife, child, or fucking dog that has its own frame on his desk. He toasts former students, genuinely congrats them, and has deep conversations with the dinosaurs who always come to these things, regardless of invitation. Emerita this, emeritus that. Charles is stuck across from him and cannot stop tapping his foot against the floor. Sean gets carried away after the fifth toast and grabs Charles by the neck, kisses him hard, and whoops. Everyone laughs. He looks at Lehnsherr and finds him staring. Charles laughs and maybe even blushes. Lehnsherr smiles thinly and shakes his head, looks at his wristwatch.

When Charles returns from the bar with his (third?) beer, the seat beside Lehnsherr is free. Sliding into it, Charles raises his eyebrows, his bottle, says, "A toast, to a fine collaboration, sir."

Lehnsherr straightens, raises his first and only beer slightly. He looks wary. He should, Charles thinks and grins. "To your thesis," Lehnsherr corrects, and adds, softly. "And the most obvious A I've ever supervised."

Charles looks at him for two seconds too long, and it makes Lehnsherr even stiffer. "Thank you, sir," he says honestly, but his eyes slip to the man's lips. Thin, not really attractive in themselves. A tongue licks them uncertainly, nervously, and Charles knows that it is _him_.

"Charles," he warns, then shuts up as Charles gently nudges his calf with his foot.

"It's all right," Charles soothes. "No one's paying attention."

"Charles-" Lehnsherr tries again, but Charles clamps a hand over his thigh. Lehnsherr's eyes widen as if in fear, but his pupils blow.

See, no matter what the mind wants, the body is always honest.

"Sir," he breathes, makes sure to bite the side of his lower lip so subtly that it will look like he did not mean to, flicks his eyes between Lehnsherr's eyes and lips. Leans in carefully, breathes a little louder, adds a shake to the last breath. "Do you want to take me home?"

Lehnsherr's breathing stutters. His eyelids flutter, as if he is shivering. He says, almost too low to catch, "You know I do."

When Charles's breath hitches this time, it is for real. It is the thrill, unbearable, and the sweat by his temple. The heat rising to his face - he cannot fake that, not yet.

He really wants this man. Maybe more than anyone, ever.

"But I can't."

The world stops spinning, the colour drains. When Charles speaks, it is with a pitiful, weak voice, before he can clamp his lips shut. "What?"

"I'm sorry. I'm married. I have a daughter. I can't."

It is almost worse, to have believed he had been in reach, and then lose it. Of course it is fucking worse. It is a Victorian novel, devoid of action. It is an endless procedural, where the characters circle each other, on and on without release. It is Lehnsherr sitting beside him and admitting that he would, but could not. Could, but would not. Charles did not realise the stakes had become this high, and that the rejection would feel so harsh.

Now to save the situation, with those realisations in mind. He searches for something to say that is not childish, angry, undignified. He settles on, "I know you are," but does not say what he refers to. Nods, and smiles, but it is fucking wobbly. He stands. "Worth a try."

His eyes must betray him. God fucking damn it.

Beer. Beer is good.

"See you around, I'm sure," he quips over his shoulder, catches one last glimpse of Lehnsherr's white-lipped face, and the almost-sadness mirrored, no doubt, by Charles, and pushes into the small crowd by the bar. Kesha is playing on the speakers, suggesting he drink more. Not a bad idea.

The night wears on, and he assumes Lehnsherr leaves. He chats up the bartender, accepts a free drink - ridiculously overdone, flowers and egg whites and fruit peels, it is whatever, it is good - and decidedly does not sulk. He does _not_ , because whatever Lehnsherr was, there will be others, and in contrast to what people might think - especially Darwin, the wingman - he does fail sometimes. It happens.

It’s just that. It’s just.

He closes his eyes.

_You know I do_.

Fuck.

* * *

  
Summer.

He quits waiting tables to focus in the PhD application. Buys coffee in cheap paper cups, then steals refills when no one is looking. Sometimes he rinses someone's used cup in the bathroom and tries not to succumb to shame, tells himself it is just for now. One day he will buy those organic, expensive coffees, cover other people's bills because he can, and forget this time.

Please may he forget this time.

He spends most his days in the university library, scraps idea after idea until he stumbles on one that might actually work. Sits bent over his computer, reference literature, source material until his neck and shoulders make him feel twenty years older. Like Lehnsherr, only that man is ridiculously fit, and probably lifts.

Charles dances, where he can get in free. Bums drinks from Alex, cigarettes from Sean, weed from Angel. Knows they will forgive him, and make sure he pays them back. It's just slow right now, okay, please. Leaves before midnight and starts the day over again when the library opens at eight.

He sees Lehnsherr from time to time, sometimes in the library, sometimes outside. Charles always ducks behind a shelf, behind a wall, into an empty classroom. Confident Lehnsherr did not see him, wondering when this will stop.

He is not prepared for it when Lehnsherr finds him in the 1974 periodicals. Who would go there? Charles, that is who, searching endlessly for a misplaced book, not really thinking he will find it. He needs a break, desperately. Hasn't slept with anybody since before last week, and Sean is always less than ideal. Too quick, too perfunctory, talks too much. Hand jobs in the near dark. He can do that himself, but he missed kissing someone. He feels the frustrated energy building up like small pockets of static in his limbs, in the never quiet tap-tap-tap of his fingers against the strap of his bag. The heat is making people lazy. The clubs are quiet until he leaves, and he can never stay long.

He wonders what Lehnsherr is doing, if he is fucking his wife in the heat, or if they are too tired. If she gives him a lazy hand job, just to get it over with, like some. If Lehnsherr sits on the balcony with no shirt on to watch the sunset, if he drinks beer and thinks of Charles. If his minds turns and turns with what ifs and if onlys. _You know I do_. I know you do. _I do_.

He scrubs his hands over his face, presses the heels of his palms into his tired, dry eyes until he can see stars and it burns.

"Charles?"

He starts violently; for a hot second has the wild thought that he has somehow summoned Lehnsherr here. Down by the end of the row, clad in chinos, severe navy shirt. No tie, loafers. Not looking like a dad at all.

"Yes?" he whispers, useless until his heart calms down.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes?" Surprise makes it sound like question. "Yes", he intones pointedly, but pointlessly. He is not, has been living on noodles and vegetables from the half-price aisle. If he gets scurvy, he will have to kill himself from shame.

Focus.

"All right," Lehnsherr nods. "Are you working on your PhD application? Already?"

They're apparently doing this. Pretending like nothing has happened. Like no one has had their hands on the other's thigh.

_You know I do_. What is he supposed to do with that?

"You know it," he says. Tries to smile.

"Are you looking for something in particular?" The German syllable intertwines with the English, and Charles suddenly realises why he has been making some very out-of-character decisions regarding his porn consumption lately.

He clears his throat. "E. P. Thompson. He seems to be out for the moment."

" _Making of the English Working Class_?" Lehnsherr looks intently at him.

"The one."

"I have it,” he responds, too quickly, Charles thinks. And the world stills, Charles is sure.

"I see."

It would be rude not to offer it now. Lehnsherr scuffs his shoes, puts hands in wide pockets. Like a forty year-old man who has been married so long he forgets how flirting works.

"You may borrow it, of course."

The office is stuffy, like a sauna. The sun beats down on it as if it is angry and trying to get in. Lehnsherr huffs, wipes his forehead. The book, heavy and final in his hands. Charles eyes Lehnsherr steadily until he licks his lips, and clears his throat. "How's it going, then? Did you take my advice?"

Advice? Charles can't remember it, so he shrugs. "It's fine."

Lehnsherr nods, maybe a little desperately. "You look well."

"Sure," he says, and hoists his bag up his shoulder, painfully aware that he only looks sweaty and miserable and a little thin. When Lehnsherr's gaze locks on the awkward skin showing between his shirt collar and his neck, wrought out of order by his bag, a peculiar rage makes the backs of his hands prickle. "What," he snaps.

Lehnsherr ducks his head, scrubs hands over his face. Like he is the one who has suffered. "I've been thinking about it.”

Breathing, breathing is important. “About what?” he says, cruelly.

Lehnsherr can’t look him in the eye. It is infuriating. “It,” he says again, and adds, “Every day.”

"Oh?" Charles counters, ignores the heavy pounding of his heart. "I've been thinking about your dick since your first lecture."

Wide eyes, pale face, hands frozen. Lehnsherr looks like he just ran over a deer.

Charles goes mad with it. "I can't stop thinking about it. I can't even remember the last guy's name, I just pretended it was you with you cock up my arse, because seriously," he takes a breath, presses the point uselessly, "At this point, you could choke me on it and I'd be grateful."

The man looks terrified. Terrified, and wrecked with it. His voice in his throat, whispering, "Charles", as if he does not know if he wants him to continue or stop.

So Charles gently kicks the door closed and drops to his knees in front of Lehnsherr. He knows it looks elegant, the drop, that his lips are full and red and made for sucking. His first fencing teacher had told him that, in the armoury, before Marko had - before Charles moved out, on his own terms, _it was his own decision_. All of it is.

This is no different.

"Just let me," he whispers when Lehnsherr takes a small step back. He follows on his knees, hands on the chinos' flies. "You don't have to do anything, just let me."

"Charles," Lehnsherr groans, as if he can say nothing else, as if his name is a mantra, or a spell, or a curse. He is fully erect when Charles pulls him out, and god Jesus _Christ_ the man is big, and beautiful, and he smells clean, and maybe he is too fast as he swallows him down, but Lehnsherr's hands crash against his desk and he _swears_ loudly, knees buckling at once.

Charles moans around him, because he has never been this turned on, ever. Not even with his fencing teacher, who was _gorgeous_ , but not like this, not like Lehnsherr. His cock hits the back of Charles throat and he hums, his eyes falling shut as he concentrates on taking him deeper.

"Fuck - fuck, fuck," he hears Lehnsherr chant. " _Fuck_.”

He speeds up, technique thrown to the wind. His hands are sweaty on Lehnsherr's hips, but he does not care.

Drool leaks out the corners of his mouth, dripping off his jaw and down his neck. Lehnsherr tastes like soap and salt, his precome is bitter and sharp. Charles shuts his streaming eyes, reaches up to grab Lehnsherr’s hips with both hands and sucks _hard_.

With a hoarse sound that Lehnsherr cuts off before it gets too loud, he almost doubles over Charles, his hands clamped white on the edge of his desk. Charles could lose himself in the rhythmic, velvety slide over his tongue, heavy and pulsing, but he knows this will not last long. Lehnsherr’s cock is in his mouth, and he is so hard it becomes difficult to concentrate. It _throbs_ , spitting out dribbles of precome down his throat.

Each time he pulls up, Charles seals his lips around the shaft and sucks noisily, hard enough that it leaves Lehnsherr gasping for air. His thighs quake and Charles wonders if Lehnsherr’s wife is as good a cocksucker as Charles is.

He doubts it.

It is when Charles takes Lehnsherr's cock so deep down his throat that he is lightheaded and swaying on his knees from lack of oxygen that Lehnsherr comes with stuttering, half-whispered shouts and curses. Charles opens his eyes and watches him. He watches the way Lehnsherr shudders all over, the way his mouth trembles and his eyes squeeze tightly shut.

He swallows as if he is shameless and moans as if he cannot think of anything he would rather do. He is not, though, but still, he cannot.

When he stands, the pictures on the desk of Lehnsherr’s blonde wife and auburn child and fucking brown dog look at him as if he is Lehnsherr – happy and proud and definitely not a cheater. He feels like he is going to be sick all over the floor.

But he is Charles Xavier. He looks Lehnsherr over – the red face, the heaving chest, the cock still hanging out, the eyes squeezed shut still – and reaches around him for the fountain pen still uncapped. Feeling the eyes of Lehnsherr’s family watching him, he lifts Lehnsherr’s hand up and writes out his number.

“Call me,” he smiles, only the slightest bit wobbly, and leaves.


	2. Summer, part 2

"Then what?"

The bass of two different beats are pumping, fighting each other from two separate dance floors. Charles, on his back in the grass; Angel, braiding Sean's too long hair. Darwin looking asleep beside Charles, Alex pacing. Always pacing. Angel speaks around the cigarette in her mouth, no ash falling. The night is humid, the outdoor club is still slow, the sun never seems to set. Below the Bridge lies under a motorway. It's their usual place; you get in for free before 10 am, and the beer comes in paper cups. It's lethargic and weedy and full of night worshippers. The motorway never slows above their heads.

"I left," Charles says, and tries to pass a joint back to Darwin.

"Nice," Sean nods, head lolling back and forth between Angel's thighs. 

"It’s only been two days. He has my number. His move, I guess."

"Nice," Sean repeats. Angel tuts. 

"But do you like him?" 

"'Course I like him. You should see him," Charles says. "He's everyone's type."

"Married," Darwin mutters. 

Angel's lips, pursed; her head, tilted. She's unimpressed. 

"Holy shit," Alex grunts. When he flips his phone around, a picture of Lehnsherr stares out. The department website. Razor jaw and eyes, colder now than before, Charles thinks. "You blew this guy? Man looks military." 

"Probably is," he says. His boots had been like mirrors. "Also, happy father and lucky husband."

"Damn." 

The bass thuds into the hollows of Charles's heart, into the small vacuums that appear between beats. He breathes in the waves.

“I’ll keep you updated,” he murmurs.

Theirs is an unlikely grouping: rich white boy with the misfits and the orphans. Not that you'd know it, looking at Charles, that he had a driver in elementary school, that he learnt the piano on a Steinway and kept his own suite of rooms. The gaunt cheeks that used to be round, hollow now, won't tell you.

They split up and come back together and drift away, dancing, talking, drinking, dancing again. It works, and Charles may be poor, but he doesn't feel like it when they're together. Yes, Charles may be poor, but he needs this to be able to focus. The PhD application must come first; it's plan A and B, all the way through the alphabet. It's the thing that will solve all his problems if he's accepted. Knowing this has made it easy to cut down on everything, everything but this. There's a small budget in the bank for rent that is absolutely reliant on his computer not breaking. Food can be scrounged, and so can beer. Thoughts of money mix with his hunger and his stress, and blends mellowly out into his blood stream. They beat like the bass into his ears until he can't hear them anymore. He's lived on the margins before, when he had to - when he was - when Mother-

It is what it is. Finding a hook-up has never been about finding a meal before now, of hoping for a breakfast, but he refuses to feel ashamed. Not yet. 

The night winds on, the crowds grow. He feels too drained to do this, really. He should go back and find Sean again, who is hardly even bi, but who at least keeps a cupboard stocked with fibres and proteins and makes a sloppy British breakfast that can last Charles a day. 

But he doesn’t have to. Lehnsherr calls him; he doesn't text, he does what he's told, and he actually _calls_. Charles is disinterestedly weaving through the crowd when his phone goes off. He slides to answer it before he can get out of the forest of bodies that doesn't care about his life, his choices, his heart beating fast. 

Lehnsherr is drinking. Charles can immediately tell. 

"Where are you?" he asks, cuts through Lehnsherr's babbling, shouts over the music. 

A bar on Main. 

Shooting off a text to Angel, he doesn't run to the tube. He doesn't walk, but he doesn't run. There's just one stop between him and Lehnsherr, and he tries to breathe deep, to clear his head. But he's outside in no time at all.

He's obviously a fish out of water - the bar is all copper bulbs and velvet seats and polished Derbys. Loafers and t-shirt and tight jeans and dirty canvas bag make him look like a rent boy in here. 

Maybe he wouldn't notice if he hadn't once been a part of them. He knows a Derby from an Oxford, to match a tie with a handkerchief, and can tell a made-to-measure off the rack from a tailored suit. Such knowledge is gratis for the upper class. It's also why he knows that Lehnsherr wasn’t born into money. 

It's in how money looks on him, and in how he looks, sitting in the booth at the back. Like he cares about seeing the door, and the crowd, and he hasn't drunk nearly as much as the plastered white collars hollering at the moon like privileged kids not knowing enough to care about the wolves in the shadows. Charles can never _not_ know about the wolves again, not anymore.

"Hi," he says, as he slides in beside Lehnsherr. Not too close. Wishes he'd taken a mint before arriving. Now he must avoid breathing beer into Lehnsherr's perfect, scared face. 

"Charles."

He looks closer, into Lehnsherr's eyes, and finds them red-rimmed. Tired - exhausted. Momentary conscience blurs his thoughts. Winning should feel good, he reminds himself. Otherwise it's losing. 

"How are you?" he asks, because he's not unfeeling, and he doesn't sleep with anyone but the willing. That's unthinkable. He'll walk out, and he's done it before. 

"How's your research?" Lehnsherr counters, voice hoarse and humourless. 

"Fair enough," Charles amends. "Should I order some-"

"We should talk," Lehnsherr says over him. "Not here," he adds, and stands.

"Whatever you want." He smiles softly, and he's not trying to flirt. He's not. 

"My wi - I - my-," Lehnsherr starts and stops, and closes his eyes, breathes. "Come with me."

Charles stands up, too.

They walk. The streets ripple - heat, and bodies, and drinking, the air still. People moving from bar to bar, laughing, hooking up while the light is long and the days move seamlessly from one to another. Charles is sobering, enough to see that Lehnsherr is angry. He's furious. His thin lips are tight, his jaw is set. Charles has no idea how this will go, if they'll have sex, or if he's lead somewhere violent. He's not afraid - and maybe he's still drunk, more than he thought. Maybe he just knows that whatever will come, he's had worse. He wishes he had a while to collect his thoughts, and reassess, and come up with a backup, but it's not far, and they're outside a tall door with a code lock, and then in a marble staircase, an ancient elevator with a proper grate, and then double doors of wood. Lehnsherr is unlocking them, and Charles realises this is where Lehnsherr lives. A rental apartment for an extended stay, obviously, but where he _lives._

"Sir-" he starts, but Lehnsherr is shaking his head furiously, pushes him inside a cramped hallway, closes the doors. 

"Don't - don't do that," Lehnsherr says. "It's Erik."

And it takes Charles by surprise, because he thought that was the thing. It's power, isn't it? And power is always a thing.

"Okay," he says, again, lost until they are standing too close in the narrow hallway and there's nowhere to move. "Okay. Erik."

"Charles, I-"

Charles knows what's coming. _It was a mistake, I'm sorry: I love my wife, I just -_

And he's not ready for it, not yet - not when he feels the electric needles of lust in his hands, in his legs, travelling up his lower back and spreading, bringing heat to his cheeks and making it difficult to see reason. "Have you been thinking about me?" he interrupts. "Have you been thinking about what we did?"

It's a dangerous gamble, but when Lehnsherr's pupils blow, and a shudder travels all through his body Charles realises that he was wrong before. Lehnsherr isn't furious – or, if he is, if he was, it's not with Charles. He's wound up like a spring about to snap.

"You - you-" Lehnsherr closes his eyes, but his hands come up, clutches at Charles jacket. Then they push it roughly off him. "I've never cheated on her," he says. "Never."

"Okay," Charles nods, and leans in to kiss him. "That's good."

Lehnsherr doesn't kiss like he's never kissed a man before - but Charles doesn't even know what that means. Lehnsherr is desperate for it, and it seems like he can’t decide if he wants to bite Charles or be taken by him. Like he doesn't know what will save him. Like he wants Charles to try anyway. 

Charles whimpers, and it makes Lehnsherr shove him - hard, into coat hangers on the wall, and he's very strong. He wrenches Lehnsherr's chinos open, and it makes him swear into Charles's neck. 

"I've never - I haven't -" he groans into Charles's ear, and when he presses his hard length into Charles's, his breath catches. 

"It's okay," Charles tries to say, but there's no air in his throat, in his lungs, and he sways on the balls of his feet because he's so turned on, and he doesn't feel like he's going out on a limb by thinking Mrs Lehnsherr isn't home. "It'll be fine, Erik."

"I can't stop thinking about this."

Charles is nodding, wants Lehnsherr to continue grinding into him, wants his own jeans open, wants his cock in Lehnsherr's hands. "I need you to fuck me, Erik." His eyes flutter close when Lehnsherr stutters, when he grinds harder, when he slams the wall above Charles head. He's not even lying when he says, "God, I need it so bad, Erik, please."

"I have -" Lehnsherr tries to say, but Charles wraps his hand around his length through the cotton of his boxers and drags his teeth down to Lehnsherr's adams apple. "I haven't -"

"It's okay, it's okay," he soothes. "I'll show you. But you've got to do it right here."

Lehnsherr groans, long and deep, and shudders, and begs him to stop, clamps a hand over Charles's and holds it still. "Too much."

Somehow, Charles's hands are shaking - he doesn't know why, and it's all he can think of, so maybe his voice comes out a bit too hard when he bites out, "Then _fuck me_." He lets Lehnsherr go, to undo the fly on his jeans. "There's lube in my bag, and a condom. Do it, Erik, please."

And he should probably wait, but _he doesn't want to_. He doesn't want to, and even while he surprises himself with how much he needs this, he thinks that surely, he deserves it. Surely, he deserves something for all those scars, and all those funerals, for having a worn black suit in his wardrobe, and for all those stolen coffees and hungry days and all the times he's been fucked into a bed that wasn't his own and working himself into the ground to make sure he can get the thing that was once promised to him. Surely, he deserves something for being prepared, always, to put up, for walking around with a toothbrush and condoms and looking for a meal that wouldn't bankrupt him. 

And he should probably wait, until he has Lehnsherr begging to fuck him, until he's convinced he's always wanted to fuck Charles, that it was his first thought since he saw him in his class. Until Lehnsherr feels that it this is inevitable, and the best thing that could happen. 

But he doesn't want to wait. 

So instead he slides his jeans down when Lehnsherr upends the contents of his canvas bag on the hallway floor, when his old, second-hand iPhone and his cigarettes and his lighter clatter on the tiles, and end up in a shoe, by the door, under his foot. A small leather toilet bag, and Lehnsherr's smart enough to pick it up, to wrench it open, but then looks lost with his chinos falling down and his pupils blown in the dark and lube in his hands. 

Charles wants to laugh, suddenly. Wise old courage-teacher, he thinks, and he takes the bag from Lehnsherr. "Let me," he assures, and slides his fingers underneath the hem of Lehnsherr's underpants. "I can't stop thinking about this either."

Lehnsherr, face flushed, flushing harder, looks terrified, and unable to look away from Charles's hands as they push his briefs down, down, and his cock stands hard, pink, circumcised, and leaking just for Charles. 

"I've - I've never-" he stammers, and stutters, and stops as Charles puts his hands on him, covers him in lube and strokes him, gentle but firm with two hands. "Oh, God."

Charles knows what he wants to say. I've never been with a man before, I've never dreamed of fucking a man, or making love to one, or ever thought I'd want to, and I don't know what to do. I'm not a bad person, I don't why I'm making these choices. You make me confused, and I don't know what to do.

Charles knows what to do. 

"You know how to fuck," he tells Erik evenly, and turns, put his hands on the wall. "Fuck me." 

The shocking cold of too much lube on his arse, applied by shaking hands and wide fingers, makes him moan like he's desperate for it. "Tell me you want this," Lehnsherr demands, his forehead on Charles's back. "Tell me how much."

 _Erik_. Lehnsherr shudders when Charles says his name, when his British consonants end on a breath, and his fingers grasp nothing on the wall. "I need you to put your cock in me. I need it, Erik." 

And then the push of Lehnsherr's fingers inside of him, getting him wet, two at once, and Charles can only breathe shakily against the wall and curse. He does needs this. He needs the innocence of those first touches, of the uncertain slide, and the unsure breath in his ear. If he wanted to be fucked with skill and brag, he'd have found someone else, one of the millions in this starved, too hot city. He needs _this_ , needs Lehnsherr, and to take something that is unusual, and give back something precious. Charles needs to make this amazing. 

“That's so good, Erik," he groans, throws his head back and gasps when Lehnsherr, too wound up, still so close to snapping, slams the wall above Charles with his fist and swears. "Please, _please_ fuck me."

Lehnsherr's cock against him, breaching him, is everything he can think about. His head is blessedly focused, and silent, and absorbed. He knows he can take it, he's done it before and there's enough lube between them that it's running down his thighs. It's slow, and torturous, and it burns like fire, but it _works_ , and Lehnsherr is chanting _oh god, oh god, oh fuck_ behind him. He breathes through it, and Lehnsherr is too careful, but Charles keeps a hand on his hip anyway to stop him if he goes too fast. Sex isn't all that complicated when you've done it a thousand times before, and this would be no different if this wasn't Lehnsherr. Lehnsherr, who hasn't had this kind of sex before, Lehnsherr who has a six pack and auburn hair, who dresses so neat he might as well be straight out of a magazine, who wears a simple gold band on his finger and moans loudly into Charles's ear and sounds like he doesn't believe what's happening. 

Then Lehnsherr's fully inside Charles, and he hears him stutter, and feels his strong thighs shake behind his own, and how Lehnsherr fights not to pull out so he can thrust in again. How he fights, and loses, when Charles moans and says, "Jesus, do it."

It's not a long fuck. Charles knows from how their voices echo out into the marble outside, down the stairs and the varnished bannisters, from how they paint it with their lust, from how they teach the boring, predictable bourgeoise what it means to be liberated, and honest, and brave, on Lehnsherr's part. How it feels to be wanted, on Charles's, and how dangerous it is, to have it. He throws his head back and moans louder, and fists his own cock, until he's shouting, and then Lehnsherr pounds into him like an animal without sense, grips his hips and arse cheeks and lets out the kind of loud moans that only a man who's not used to being loud can make, as if he's surprised, and caught, suddenly, by too many sensations. He sounds starved, and wretched, and so, so surprised to be overtaken with it. Perfect sounds, and perfect movements, and Charles comes in long, agonising pulses against the wall, clamping down on Lehnsherr's cock and floating on the high, the rush. Lehnsherr shouts, and his hands are cramping, gripping Charles so hard he almost comes back to himself, and his hips are stuttering back, forth, in, out and in, and faltering, and his forehead is on Charles's back, leaning hard, as if he wants to double over and never get up. 

And then, after an eternity, it's over. They breathe into silence, and Charles feels like he wants to sink down onto the hallway mat and put his head between his knees, because the world is tilting and there are spots in front of his eyes that he can't blink away. He's hungry, he realises. 

"Jesus fuck," he whispers. It's not even a play, it's not rehearsed. His arse aches, it was way too much too fast, and they're not doing that again for a good long while, but he feels _amazing_. 

Lehnsherr is still trying to catch his breath when Charles turns, takes in the nearly forty-year-old man with his pants around his ankles and his shirt tails creased, and kisses him gently on his thin lips. "I needed that," he smiles. 

Lehnsherr looks at him then, and his lips form the beginning of words until he lands on, "Can I get you a drink?"

Charles laughs. 

Amazingly, Lehnsherr keeps his crisis internal. They sit at a small kitchen table by a large bay window that looks out over the city district and eat brie and drink beer from glass bottles. No, Mrs Lehnsherr isn't home, and neither is Lehnsherr junior - they are back in Germany, with family. Her family. 

Charles runs a naked foot up over Lehnsherr's legs, socks on the parquet, listens with his face schooled into interest.

His postdoc is demanding, and soon over, and next year he has to go back to Berlin and apply for more funding, and hope for the best. It's a nomadic life, and uncertain, and his wife is in the same spot. 

And Charles? 

Charles shrugs. Lehnsherr knows what needs to be known. He has one chance, and he must take it. He must get full funding, or go back to waiting tables until he finds another job and try again next year. He'll be kicked out of student housing in December, and he tries not to think about it. 

It will either happen or it won't.

Lehnsherr asks for his phone, and fiddles with it. Not looking very dad-like at all, Charles says, and when he gets it back, there's a new number in it. 

Under _Erik_. 

* * *

It's a new reality that looks and smells much the same. Like cheap coffee running over his hand from thin paper cups, like crowded subways, and long summer days. But there's a buzz in his pocket now and then, and a name that looks like it's spelled wrong, and texts sent from Germany with carefully worded questions and answers. _How are you? Yes, I'm in Berlin over the weekend. Can I see you again? How about Monday? Would you like to come over? I should be home by late afternoon._

Charles works on his research proposal, writes in staccato rhythm, forcibly grinding out sentences on a worn keyboard, and researches, and massages his temples, and goes home to a shoebox apartment that feels like a sauna. The air vibrates all throughout the city, like something big is about to happen, but it never does. When Monday rolls around, he fidgets all morning, and bounces his leg, and wrenches a lonely, irritating sentence out each hour, painfully, until they just stop.

In the end, he erases them all, and splurges on a salad in the cafeteria to settle his stomach, before hopping on the tube to Erik’s place.

And then it all goes to shit pretty quickly. 

Erik isn't at the door when Charles lets himself in. He shrugs off his jacket and walks carefully down the narrow, parqueted hallway with his heart sinking into his stomach. The smell of onions is wafting through the high-ceilinged apartment, the smallest of breezes blowing right through the kitchen windows to the bedroom, where he can see the opened double doors of a balcony. The bed is made, the sheets a soft olive green. The curtains billow in golden light. Erik, shouting at him from the stove, to come in, to come here, wanting to know how he likes his pasta. 

Charles feels like he's walking through a nightmare. 

Erik is cooking for him. 

He stands in beige dad shorts, in an apron tied around his waist, with his blue shirtsleeves rolled up over tanned arms. He pours red wine into red wine glasses, and has salad spoons in the salad bowl. 

Charles's teeth catch on each other. They are jagged surfaces that do not fit in his mouth. They are the reason he sounds disgusted when he spits out the question, "You're cooking?", and Erik turns to look at him. He hasn't shaved. The beginnings of an auburn beard frame his face like a model dad, like a husband, and it speaks volumes of how comfortable he thinks he can be with Charles. Like this is a _date_. Like they're _dating_. 

There's a spoon in his hand. "Yes?" he says, and doesn't approach Charles. Then the question on his face melts into _amused_ , and _fond_ , as if he's a teacher and Charles a child. "I forget what it was like to be a student."

Charles stills. The grating in his head has locked, uncomfortably, into position. "Excuse me?" he says.

Erik shakes his head. "To make a big deal of a meal. It's just dinner, I'd make it anyway."

"Lucky coincidence that I'm here to fuck then," he says. "Wouldn’t want you to go through any trouble."

"Don't be crass.” Irritated now, about the reminder. Soon angry. Like he's warning Charles, showing his teeth, and saying, _step carefully now_. 

It makes Charles's blood boil. "Did you think this would make it feel better for you?”

“What?” Erik, staring, shaking his head. "What's the matter with you?" 

Like he can't believe what's happening. Like he doesn't understand why Charles isn't falling to his knees in gratitude before him. 

_What’s the matter with you? Why are you being difficult? Why can’t anything about you ever be easy, Charlie?_

_You make me so tired._

“What’s the matter with me, let’s see-” he starts, but Erik rolls his eyes, throws the spoon onto the counter so it clatters, loudly. 

"Don’t." 

This is not what he signed up for.

So he doesn't stop, only shoulders his jacket again - realises he's been holding it in his hands since he came in. Obviously he knew he couldn't do this. He got what he wanted, and this - this is finished. 

Erik is shouting his name when he lets the door slam behind him. Fuck it, fuck him, fuck this, everything. The ancient elevator takes forever to arrive, and he really should have taken the stairs, because Erik's door opens as he steps inside it, hurriedly pushing the buttons, any buttons.

“Charles!”

Erik crams his hand between the door and the grate. Lips turned down as if in disappointment. Well, he’s not the first person to be disappointed at the thought of losing his shag. He’s certainly not the first person to be disappointed in Charles.

But then Erik wrenches the door open again and says nothing.

“You bellowed?”, Charles says, and folds his arms over his chest. 

Erik just heaves a sigh. “I didn’t grab my keys.”

He shrugs. “So?”

“The door locks, I-“ He closes his eyes, obviously coming down from his parental perch. “I need to borrow your phone.”

The locksmith arrives just half an hour later, but it's half an hour Charles opts to spend sitting on his arse by the door, scrolling through Tinder, making sure Erik knows. It’s not the most awkward _date_ he’s ever had.

It’s close, though.

He leaves as they start drilling the lock, and Erik doesn’t stop him.

* * *

But they find each other in the Library on Wednesday. 

They fuck in Erik's office, quietly, after agreeing to talk, nothing else, but then Charles is in Erik's lap, and Erik's hands are around them both, and it seems silly to stop, to say _hang on_ and ask _what is this to you?_

Erik drives him home to his rental apartment after that, to really talk, he says, but they fuck again in the kitchen. Charles wishes Erik would just understand, intuitively, or by empirical evidence even, that their thing will not be built on talks. It doesn't matter _why_. No one ever cares about _why_. The bed seems too big a challenge in light of this, so he lets Erik stroke him while he sits on the counter with his arse bare on the marble. 

He decides to fuck Erik on every surface of that disgustingly domestic rental, with its billowing curtains and its little girl shoes in the hallway and its neatly arranged throws. He decides to take, for once, and not worry about the fallout, and to believe that it doesn't matter if this is what he deserves or not. 

They fuck like horny teenagers, and Erik doesn't try to feed him again. There's water, and coffee, and when Erik falls asleep on the couch, he sneaks into the kitchen and helps himself to leftovers and fruit, before he leaves. Sleeping over just doesn't seem necessary. 

It will seem like he annoys Erik, but Charles won't know why. If it's the unceremonious goodbyes, him stealing the food he'd refuse if Erik offered it to him, or the fact that Erik can't stop texting him when he gets back from Berlin on Mondays. The weekends are long, and empty. Sean shrugs when he turns down a quick shag and breakfast, and Angel tilts her head like she's analysing a math problem, never mind that both of them nearly failed their GCSEs. She doesn't complain when he spends more time with her on the weekends, though. 

And not everything needs an explanation. Some things, he thinks, can just naturally be and naturally end. 

But not yet. 

* * *

"Where are you from?" Erik asks, as they lie on the living room floor, one of those expertly matched forest green afghan blankets between them and the parquet. 

"I didn't know you cared," Charles smirks. He follows a bead of sweat down between Erik's pecs with his finger, guiding it to the shimmer on Erik's stomach, letting them merge. 

The air is completely still. The heat inside Erik's fin-de-siècle apartment is close to choking. Their bodies have cried sweat, the doors and windows open, the curtains unmoving. The asphalt blisters outside, but they don't see it.

The balcony is open again, and the gentle hum of a radio playing makes it feel like nothing's about to happen - like this is peace, an interim, and Charles wants to let it be just that. His thoughts do not flit from one end of his mind to the other, but lie, floating, just out of reach. No deadlines, no applications, no trouble. 

"Did you grow up here?" 

Charles gives in and licks Erik with his tongue. He wishes Erik would feel the same slow contentment that he is feeling. That he wouldn't attack it with a shovel, and look for the fires caught underneath.

"Do you have family here?"

He sighs, and gives up. "Would I be living on pot noodles if I did?" he murmurs, and turns to reach for his phone. "No blood relations, in any case."

"You fascinate me."

Charles snorts without looking back. "Yes, I'm very mysterious."

Erik is quiet for a minute, but then he says lowly into Charles's ear, "I want to fuck you."

"That's cute," Charles says, works a kink out of his neck. It cracks like he isn't just twenty-something. "But I'm not ready to go again."

The phone is tugged out of his hands, and when he looks up, Erik smiles, that toothy grin that is so helplessly charming. "Oh?" He cages Charles between his arms, looms, bends his head to nuzzle at a spot below his ear. Charles gasps as a broad hand palms his ass, down, and easily slides two fingers inside him. "You feel pretty fucking ready to me."

" _Jesus_."

"In fact, you feel wet with my come in you."

"Erik-" 

"I could just slide right in."

The moan that escapes Charles as Erik manhandles him, pushes his legs apart and hoists him up, pulls him around that trim waist, is animalistic rather than sexy, Charles thinks. "You're unbelievable," he gasps. Erik's cock, already hard, pushes against his entrance. With Charles's legs around Erik's waist, he doesn't need any more guidance, and he really does slip right in. " _Motherfucker_ ," Charles swears loudly, only aware of the dull ache from the last time, that seduces his body, betrays his mind. " _Fuck,_ Erik."

"Yes," Erik says shakily, and pushes in and in and in and then pulls back, and sets to drive Charles out of his mind. The man's stamina is out of this world, Charles thinks. Twenty years on him, but he feels like getting aroused again _hurts_. 

"You're so fucking gorgeous," Erik is rasping in his ear. "You're amazing. I've never been so turned on by anyone. You're goddamn perfect."

Despite himself, Charles moans and grips at the afghan. It’s insane, it's mad. 

But then, so is he, and so is Erik, who is still choking out words into his neck.

"Every time you leave I think about being inside you and it feels like a dream. I didn't know sex could feel like this. Every time I pull out I feel like something dies inside me. God, Charles, you're so _wet_."

"Don't stop," Charles begs. "Fucking hell, don't stop, Erik. It feels so fucking good, I swear."

Their bodies are slippery with sweat, and he would cry if he could, right there on the floor with Erik moving inside him, and whispering things that are worse than just sex - they're sacrilegious, and horrible, and he can only chant back _don't stop_ until he feels cold like a panic attack is coming on, and his vision swims, and his hands and feet hurt because he is so turned on and so desperate to come. "Make me come, Erik," he pleads, begs, whining horribly, and Erik's eyes roll back, and it seems like he has to dig deep for the strength to start pounding Charles for real, to pull out and _slam_ back in. He slumps over Charles when he comes, with a terrified cry torn out of his chest, and Charles tries to welcome the whiteness behind his eyes, and to let himself sink into it, and not think about what’s waiting on the other side.

* * *

The next time he comes over, and he has sucked Erik off on the floor between the bedroom and living room, Erik demands that they move to the bed, and the soft mattress stills any further conversation, like Charles knew it would. He feels jittery, a little bit shaky, like his hands won't still - abstinence, he decides.

"Can I smoke in here?"

Erik just shrugs. Gets up from the bed, and says, as if weary, "Won't you just do what you want anyway?" 

He jerks on the ancient balcony lock. The breeze that sweeps in ruffles their hair, and Charles, slightly stung, lights up in silence. A radio is humming outside again, and children are playing in the yard below. They seem to hover between screaming at each other and laughing, and Charles feels unsettled by the nearness to both. 

"There's a lot of things I want to do that I won't," he murmurs at length. His mind turns, unbidden, to Raven. He lets the thought sink back down into darkness - he thinks about gripping that phone, instead, and of that closed door, the one without a lock, and the steps outside. He thinks about fighting, and - he stops thinking. 

"Like what?" Erik asks, oblivious, his back to Charles.

Charles takes a long drag on the cigarette. The smoke flows out of him when he speaks. "Fuck you," he says, and meets Erik's gaze calmly when he turns around. 

"What?"

Charles shrugs. "It's something I won't do. Unless you ask."

This is a vast overstep. Despite himself, Charles's pulse thuds hard against his chest, and his hands wants to shake again. This is how affairs become too real, and how they end. How a man, married to a woman, comes to his senses, as if sexuality, or infidelity, are defined by boundaries such as these. 

The penetrated man, wrote Raewyn Connell, can never be what he was before. The implications of power are unmistakable in the act. It is taking something away, and giving something back: it is the deconstruction of gender structures, the body in its wrecking ball-state. 

He says this. Erik just looks at him, and the cigarette between his lips. When he sits down on the bed again, the sweat on his body has dried, and the affair, brought out onto the balcony, into the light, seems erased. Charles, and every trace of him, is gone. 

Erik gently frees the fag from Charles's lips. 

"I used to smoke," he says. "It was very hard to give up."

Charles watches in breathless, reverent silence as Erik brings it to his own lips, puts the filter carefully between them, and sucks. This is total corruption, he thinks. This is a tattoo on his mind now. Family man, lost in the arms of a demon. White, stained with red. Charles must be heartless to feel so - complete, when Erik exhales. He must be. He clearly knows right from wrong - he just cannot bring himself to care when Erik looks so spoiled, and so right, and like the sexiest man Charles has ever seen. He is. "Good?" he asks, throaty, giving everything away. 

Erik rolls the fag between his fingers thoughtfully. "Connell also wrote about the body as a weapon," he murmurs, and expertly flicks ashes over the rim of a glass on the bedside table.

"Did she," Charles says quietly, unable to quite catch his breath. 

Erik traces the line of his ribs, the butt of the fag dangerously close, glowing just above Charles's skin. "Yes," he breathes. "How the body can never be a neutral medium of social practice."

Charles wonders briefly if this is them fighting. If they're arguing right now, if this is their fundamental dissonance; this wrecking ball and this wreck, and their relationship to one another - but he cannot finish the thought before Erik's hand moves softly down to his inner thigh, stroking the soft inside of it. 

Then it disappears as Erik takes another drag. 

Charles clears his throat. "Meaning?"

Erik hums. He leans over Charles, exhales smoke over his navel in a hazy breath. "Meaning," he says, and hoists himself up over Charles when the smoke dissipates, his shoulders moving like music, like ripples, under his skin. He fixes the fag in the corner of his lips. "That the body-", he continues, straddling Charles,"- in all that it does-"

Smoke curls up from his mouth, like sex, and Erik takes his own length in hand, hardened now, guiding it towards Charles's open lips. "-is only acting in a play," he finishes, and smirks, and starts to slowly fist himself. Charles cannot look away. Erik mesmerizes him - he looks _relaxed_ , like he's flirting, like he's someone comfortable with another dick in his bed. Like he's enjoying himself. 

Nothing has ever turned Charles on more. "In all that it does?" he asks, and tries to smile, but stutters when Erik reaches out to trace the line of his lips with a gentle finger, before replacing it with his cock, the head resting on Charles's lower lip. 

"Labour," Erik drawls, blows smoke at the ceiling as Charles tongues his slit gently. He smirks, says, " _Sport_ ," like it’s an inside joke, and grabs Charles's jaw in a tight grip, digs his fingers into the softness under his chin. So slowly, he feeds his cock to Charles. "And sex, of course."

He looks corrupted, Charles thinks again. And Charles did that to him. He moans around Erik, and pushes his own cock against Erik's back until Erik reaches around and takes Charles in his broad, hard hand. 

"I think you could be a weapon, Charles," Erik murmurs. "You certainly..."

It shouldn't feel right, Charles thinks. He shouldn't shudder at that, and twitch in Erik's grip. He doesn't want to be dangerous, he shouldn't want it; shouldn't want to break Erik like this, and ruin him so, and shouldn't feel so powerful when he does it. He shouldn't moan helplessly when Erik pushes into him.

"God, you mouth," Erik groans. "Every time you speak I want to shut you up like this."

He pushes deeper, his cock against the tight roof of Charles's mouth. Far enough that tears start to form in his eyes; far enough that his breathing gets cut off. 

"But then you say something filthy and I can't decide what I want," Erik sighs, palming Charles's cheek to feel himself inside. He pulls back, lets him breathe, then starts a steady pace in and out Charles's mouth. "I just want you on your back in my bed," he growls, his voice raspy. "I just - _can't_ \- get enough of you."

Charles thinks that maybe that's all he wants as well. To lie here, and be enough, someone's weapon, or unattainable ideal, and never worry about any other needs than someone else's. To be so attuned to Erik's needs that it doesn't matter what has happened before - to have no baggage to deal with, or memories waiting like a ticking bomb for him to defuse or be destroyed by. Maybe it could be all of it, for Charles, to be a vessel and see Erik sweat above him, and watch his muscles stand out on his arms as he grips Charles's jaw and flexes against the wall in front of him. 

With a long shudder, a soft, drawn out groan, Erik comes in pulses down Charles's throat. Some dribbles down his chin, and he closes his eyes and fists himself - once, twice, three times, maybe more, desperate, and then comes with a breathless gasp against Erik's back. 

"Fuck," he swears when Erik lets him. "Fucking _hell_ , Erik."

Erik just smiles, serenely, and smears his come over Charles's neck. The forgotten cigarette has gone out between his lips, so he crunches it against the make-shift, water-glass-ashtray on the night stand. 

* * *

"What are you doing?" Angel is frowning at him. She's confused. She's wounded, across a table; her break, his free coffee, and a second to respond to Erik's last text. Charles doesn't know why; this - this is what he does. 

"Nothing," he says. "What I usually do."

"No," Angel says. "What are you doing with him?"

"I'm playing him," he retorts, frowns, shrugs. They don't do judgemental - with everyone else, yes never with each other. "What I usually do."

"You don't need to play him," she murmurs. "You already got him."

"I'm not done." He checks his phone again, sees the time, grabs his jacket. "Got to go, honey. See you at Darwin's."

She nods, beaten, bemused, and wholly unconvinced.

* * *

Erik has gone quiet again. Sometimes quiet, brooding; sometimes happy, sated - confounded, but smiling. Not now. Now he's looking at Charles like he'd rather not.

"What it is?" Charles asks, but gently. Gently for him, anyway. 

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"Doesn't what bother me, Erik?" He pulls the sheets slightly higher as he leans over for the fags. 

"Sleeping around."

Charles pauses with his lighter raised. But Erik doesn't sound angry, or disappointed. He sounds defeated. 

"Sleeping with you, you mean?" he asks, the cigarette wobbling up, down, towards the flame and rearing back. 

"Yeah."

Charles cracks his neck. "Not really. It's..." he trails off on an inhale. "It's about letting go of my ego."

Erik's eyes follow Charles's hand as he runs it through his hair, careful with falling ashes and burning tips. "Is it," Erik says, and reaches for the cigarette. Charles hands it to him. Watching Erik smoke is poetry, he thinks. He's so careful, and he enjoys it so much, the way only a person who has struggled to give it up can. The curtains billow in a soft breeze from the balcony, and it smells of late summer. Cold, clear, and he wants to fill his lungs with it. Feels like he can finally breathe after the long, never-ending hazy days. 

"Yes," Charles answers honestly - he thinks. "It makes you a better person."

Erik frowns, nearly winces, hands the cigarette back. "That's a nice thought about infidelity. I could probably believe it."

Charles wonders if he really could. If it could as simple as that. Believing in something and making it work. Steeling your mind, and deciding to wake up each day with the same truth in his head. Choosing to stay faithful, choosing to love. 

"Maybe," he says instead. "But I think it's true. It's not about me, after all, I don't matter."

"You don't want to be special to someone?" Erik asks. 

"Why?" Charles asks, and flicks ash into an old glass on the nightstand. "I want to know my own worth. Not leave it up to someone else. That's sounds dangerous."

Erik smirks. "Lone wolf, and all that?"

Charles grimaces. "I didn't mean it like that-"

Erik hums, like he didn't hear. "I used to think the same."

He sometimes thinks of their conversations as a roulette with a very slow bullet. The trigger has been pulled, and the bullet has been fired, and he can hear it, he just never knows when it will hit him. "Don't give me that 'and then I grew up' or 'then I had kids' bullshit," he retorts. He snubs the butt of his cigarette into the side of the glass and casts about for another. 

"Why not?" Erik hands him the packet. Takes the lighter from Charles hands and flicks it into flame. "It might be true," he says. 

Charles sucks on the new filter, Erik's eyes heavy on his mouth. "It might be," he agrees. "For you."

"For me," Erik echoes quietly. 

The same radio hums outside, and in a moment, it smells like Autumn. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments on the first chapter, and forgive me for the late update. I hope you're staying safe and wearing a mask.  
> Xoxo,  
> Isolee


	3. Fall / Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sirens have been blaring for so long Charles has stopped hearing them. Erik is a tinnitus, a foghorn warning people of himself, a shot in the dark.   
> He's done a lot of stupid things in his life. Nothing has felt like this.

The leaves are turning yellow. Even the city air is crisp enough to cut them off their branches. They fall to the ground unhurriedly, as if they can hardly be bothered with the triviality of it. 

Charles is. _Below_ has closed for the season. The fairy lights are hanging colourless on dirty strings when he passes by on his way to Uni. His buffer in the bank is running out, and he sits sometimes - on the tube, in Erik’s bed, in his own – and feels time getting away from him; can actually sense the money running out in every minute that slips, like oil over water. There just isn’t enough time to be the best.

How different his life could have been. He could have found his passion in the natural sciences. He could have had a private tutor, at home, in the manor. He could have driven his own car to Uni every day, and bought a fancy coffee on the way, the same place every day. He could have had a boyfriend.

Well. Not at the same time.

But he could have.

He stares out the window to the far-away sound of Erik talking. A couple outside are running to catch the 50. They are running hand in hand, and he imagines… And then he stops.

He sits across from Erik in that bar he likes, the one with fancy drinks, the copper, the quiet music, the one far above street level. The one that makes Charles uncomfortable.

And he sees the couple running hand in hand. Laughing.

And he looks at Erik.

_Would you do that with me?_ He doesn't say, doesn't ask. Or where Charles is comfortable, with his friends, with the music pumping. Could Erik ever be there, with him? In the haze, with the bass. _Where are you then? At home? Fucking your wife?_

What is he doing. He doesn’t want this.

That's when he realises that he has tried. That he's almost fitting into Erik's vision. He's wearing a proper shirt - cheap, but white, and it fits him. His shoes are old, but well cared for. The lucky break of having had the same shoe size since he moved away from home. 

Lucky. 

The sigh he heaves shakes. 

Erik looks up at him, pen hovering above Charles's printed research proposal. "Are you all right?" 

"Brill," he says, then quietly blanks, because that word has never been in his vocabulary. He should go, should leave, but the thought is petrifying him. Literally makes him unable to move. Something is glaringly wrong. The sirens have been blaring for so long Charles has stopped hearing them. Erik is a tinnitus, a foghorn warning people of himself, a shot in the dark. The train wreck waiting to happen, with Charles not even tied to the tracks: he’s just lying there, waiting for the inevitable. 

Has the gun already fired, or is it still aiming for the perfect spot?

He's done a lot of stupid things in his life. Nothing has felt like this.

Only - only when – locked into a room – a manor, a prison – and Cain sniffing the door -

It is how it is. Drinking feels so good. That’s okay – he’s only twenty, twenty something. There's plenty of time to learn to cope, and to stop drinking. Smoking, too, eventually - so much time. 

“Application's coming along,” Erik says, looks like he might want to smile. 

Deadline. Charles grinds the heel of his right foot into the toes of his left. Looks at Erik. Deadline. He nods. “Nearly done, I reckon. But how do you know…” he trails off, shrugs. “I don’t. Maybe I’ll wait another year. Another drink?”

But Erik is too fast and clamps a hand over his wrist when he tries to rise. “Charles - what?”

What indeed? He sways a bit, and Erik… Erik looks _disappointed_.

“Are you giving this a hundred percent?”

Shit. This? Or _this_? He wrenches his arm out of Erik’s grip. “The fuck, Erik? Don't pretend you're - just don't.” He tries to move away, and the chair tips because it has fucking _three fancy-ass legs_. 

“Asshole.”

It comes out conversationally, the thing that should be said at a volume. Travels on sound waves that slur and tip over each other until they land, not searing, but on a confused frown.

He never meant to cause a scene, but now he's the star of one. So he leaves. He trusts that Erik can foot the bill.

* * *

The night he takes Erik to a night club, it's pouring rain. It's not easy - Erik insists on wearing a baseball cap and hoodie, like a fucking celebrity. But Erik's promises are not broken, not even when they're made under duress. I'm sorry, let me make it up to you, let me take you out?

Charles has him once it’s made, and maybe this is the only reason Erik doesn't turn back when they get to the corner. 

"I've never been," he had told Charles. "Why should I have?"

That's the patriarchy for you, Charles thinks. A man brought up not even considering he might want to know what it feels like to be with men as well as women. A man not realising he can explore, and examine, and experiment. Thinking sexuality is a set thing, a metronome falling to one side or the other - that's not a rhythm: that's a one-legged person. 

So then, here they are. 

Erik is worried, of course. What if they're seen, what if someone recognises them, and what if this somehow gets back to the faculty. What if there are pictures. 

You're not even on Facebook, Charles reminds him, but that doesn't quite matter to Erik. What if the world explodes, Charles counters. 

Erik isn't convinced. 

But they're inside, and Erik is wearing a polo shirt, and he's drinking a G&T that's more gin than tonic, and he doesn't look like a dad. He looks like a shark entering the shallows. Charles can feel his presence like lightning under his skin, as if he's standing in a high place just before the thunder cracks. 

"You look amazing," he murmurs in Erik's ear, and Erik's body responds to him like he's a marionette. An instrument that Charles has known how to play since he was a child. Somehow, Erik's body is a language that comes as effortlessly to Charles as water, and the easy glide of limbs that would sink if they're not in motion. It's dangerous, it's almost always like drowning, and breathing just above the swell. He grips Erik's wide, hard hand and makes it a promise when he says, "Now we dance."

The music is slow, electronic, and building up to the drop. Charles guides Erik's hands over his body, and his hips into the same rhythm of their sex. Dancing is not very different, after all. 

They build up, up, up, until Erik is hard, and groaning, and saying his name breathlessly, and all Charles can say is wait, wait. 

When the beat drops, it feels like ecstasy. It feels like the release, and the fall. So they dance, and Charles feels the moment Erik truly lets go. When they've been dancing so long that they don't know where they are, only that they are somewhere close. When a man grinds into Charles from behind, and Erik is shaping himself into someone else, and Charles catches his eyes. There's no steel in them now; they are molten. Like this was who Erik was always meant to be, before he bound himself to assumptions. It's like watching a junkie shooting up after ten years on the wagon - like that, but beautiful: like watching a man find faith, and losing his ego, of transcending into a mass conscience that doesn't have troubles, or insecurities, or boundaries, or pre-made conceptions of identity. 

Erik lets go, and Charles finds himself in it, and he never wants to leave. He never wants Erik to leave. 

They come together in the back, under the pulsating lights, and Erik's hands are trembling all over him, over his thighs clenching around Erik's middle, over his flies, into his hair, and he's chanting Charles's name as if it's a mantra. 

It's still raining when they leave, stumbling, into a cab, into Erik's apartment. Erik is speaking, but Charles can't hear what he says, isn't sure he even understands him. But Erik is spreading his legs on the bed, and he's asking, and they're still wearing clothes when Charles enters him, knowing he's too fucked up to come but understanding why he doesn't care. Erik is staring at the ceiling, arms gripping the pillows above his head, and Charles is sure he hasn't seen anything like this before, hasn't been allowed in like this, with anyone. They're breathing in sync, but Charles is panicking, and Erik is moaning, and Charles's name is between them. Erik comes with Charles inside him, and Charles only prays that he doesn't remember feeling like this in the morning, and that Erik doesn't either.

* * *

Erik leaves for an extended stay in Berlin two days after that. 

* * *

The deadline is suddenly a week away. He works 10 hours, 12 hours, 14 hours a day, and sleeps, and orders take away with money he doesn't have, and repeats. Erik calls, but he's too focused to answer - he lets it ring out, until it stops. It's not until the last evening that he adds the _finalversion to the research proposal and turns his attention to the other, endless forms he needs fill out. Grades to confirm, publication lists to compose and number and attach and diplomas to copy in duplicate, triplicate. Letters of recommendation he'd entirely forgot about but refuses to run by Erik. He can't get a recommendation from the man he's shagging, that - it doesn't - he won't. He'll just have to go without. 

If he thought he would feel anything but terror once it's in the ether, he was stupid. Sean knocks on his door at fifteen past twelve, and he's still sitting there, staring at the little box on the screen saying _Thank you for applying_. He follows Sean's hand to the kitchen, where it smells of tacos and tequila, and accepts the glass that is handed to him, and relents. He leans back against his chair with a sad cheer, and begins to wait.

* * *

Winter.

The phone call comes on a wet afternoon. The sun had barely risen, and so Charles doesn't notice when it sets. The call comes nonetheless, and they congratulate him, they'd be honoured to have him, and he'd be welcome in the new year. 

And as with a wave of a wand, all his troubles have been swept clean away. Three years of employment at the University. Three years with an office, with colleagues, and knowing how much money he'd have at the end of the month. Of being able to save for the future - but not at once. At once, he'd buy new clothes. Look for an apartment that wasn't a student corridor. A new bed. He'd stock up a pantry, and ignore it and order in. He'd pay Angel back, and Sean, and Darwin, and Alex, too. He'd have them all over and cook them dinner and serve them wine. 

And he'd travel. He'd get out of this fucking town, and its stinking subway. Maybe buy a shitty car and drive into work, and buy coffee on the way. The same order, every day, at the same place, and they'd know him there. He'd never have to rinse used paper cups in bathrooms again. 

He'd be an adult. 

And then have a PhD. 

When he calls Berlin without warning, Erik doesn't call him out on it. He's just happy for him.

"You made it," he says. "Congratulations."

"Thanks," Charles says, biting a nail, smiling, pacing his shoe box, staring at the cold rain outside.

"I'm proud of you," Erik says then, and why. Why did he have to. Why would he. Why why why why. 

He leans his heavy head against the cool glass of his one window, bangs it softly against it, feeling the rush of _enough, this, that's enough_.

He says, slowly, "I made this happen, Erik."

The line goes quiet. "Of course you did." Erik, breathing. Being careful. "Well done."

"It's not thanks to you." He says this coldly, because he doesn't know what he feels. No, he knows - he doesn't know if it makes sense. But if Erik claims this part of Charles, then he might just be that rent boy in thin t-shirts, made by a powerful man. He might just be the boy on his knees in Erik's office, grateful for a small part of him.

The line, so tenuous and fragile and stretched over so many countries, falls silent again. 

If Erik feels like _he_ owns a part of this happiness; thinks he owns the part of Charles that wrote a good paper, a great application, that part that was coached into applying to the programme - then everything Charles has done - everything he worked for - he might as well be Cain's -

"Charles, of course I know that. I'm just saying - I know how hard you've worked for this. I'm proud of you for that."

And it makes Charles want to claw his skin off. The power unbalance implicated in Erik's soft tones, as if he has the right to pronounce his opinion over Charles's efforts - it burrows under his skin and refuses to be silent. 

"Why?" he says, impatient. "Why are you making a thing out of this? You can't just say, 'wow, impressive - I'm happy for you'?"

"I _am_ happy for you. Can't I also be proud?"

When Charles doesn't answer, Erik sighs. "You know what, forget it. I'm just - I'm happy you're going to be there when I get back."

"Why?" Charles snaps, again. "You're not even staying. You're going to be in fucking Berlin by the new year, for who-knows how long."

A pause. Erik, uncertain, breathing hard. "I could come to you-" he starts, his voice low, almost whispering: Charles knows why. He's trying to patch this leaking vessel, stroke down the hackles, white flag the hysteric. 

"No," Charles says, "Don't bother," and hangs up. It's childish - it's the right thing to do. 

Even though those two things have never been the same.

* * *

He ignores Erik for the rest of the week - his texts, his calls; he shares shitty beer with the other students in the communal kitchen on Friday, with people equally impressed and jealous of his success, and he forces himself to be happy. He is. He is happy. 

Angel takes off from work to celebrate with them, Sean trips in with two six packs - even Alex and Darwin show up. He can feel the phone vibrate in his pocket, and he tries to feel powerful instead of broken. 

"It's over," he tells Angel, and before she can say _I told you it was for the best_ , he gets her another beer and tells her to shut up. She may roll her eyes and flip him off all she wants, he can still see the relief on her face.

It's when he goes back to his room to change a beer-soaked shirt, thanks to Sean, that he accidentally looks at the phone. It is an accident, he isn't thinking. Missed calls in red, unread texts: the latest is a drowning, a bucket of ice-cold water, and panic.

_I'm outside._

He swears. Wrestles on a new t-shirt. Sprints down the corridor, past the kitchen as his friends shout for him, down the three, four, five stairs, almost falls on his face when he sees Erik's back through the windowed door. He's wearing a long coat in dark blue, and his breath is escaping in wisps. A brutal, iron-fisted hand clenches around Charles's ribcage, and he decides that it's rage.

"Are you stupid?" he hisses as soon as he gets the door open, the cold air reaching out to raise goose bumps over his bare arms even through the haze of alcohol. "What if someone recognises you?" 

"You wouldn't answer me," Erik says, and his eyes are narrowing. It's an ugly look, but his cheeks are red, his nose is as well - he looks cold. And then he says, as if in warning: "I thought this was what you wanted."

He's no longer a foghorn: he's a growling Rottweiler, a red laser sight finding its mark. Well, Charles has had enough of that for a lifetime, way before Erik came into the narrative.

"I didn't," he retorts, like always, running headfirst into that wall, because fuck them for doing that to him. 

Erik looks violent when he's angry - taller, imposing, dark. It’s not fair. In no world is it fair, not when his voice is low and dangerous and hurried and full of ice. "I swear you drive me crazy, Charles. What do you want from me? Do you want me to apologise for being proud of you? It makes no sense."

"I want you to leave me alone," Charles hisses. Erik looks like he wants to punch something, speechless with it.

"I’m risking _everything_ to talk to you right now." 

Ah. 

That has always been the crux of the matter. The question of sacrifice, and of investment. Even that is unfair - Charles, as usual, is the one with nothing to lose. Of course he should be grateful. 

"I don't want you risking everything," Charles says, but Erik is picking up speed, and his chest is heaving with it.

"I must be out of my mind. How could I expect to please a playboy who treats everyone like a fucking game?”

Charles laughs, and it sounds brittle and hollow, but it really _is_ funny, isn't it? "Did you think I wanted you to - that I would make you do this to prove - what? That we - what?"

He doesn't want an answer. He should just let Erik say that unforgivable thing and then they can be rid of each other. Charles can know what Erik blames him for, what he has done to Erik’s life, and it will be enough to keep him away forever. 

_You ruined me._

_I was happy before you._

_You used me._

And yet. 

And still. 

Erik will hate himself for saying it. If he has hurt Erik already, if he’s fucked up Erik’s life, and he knows he has, what would that do to him? 

What would that drive him to?

He shakes his head when Erik draws another furious breath to speak. “You know it’s not like that, Erik. You’ve got to know,” he says through lips that are growing numb in the cold. It might be true, it might not. Charles doesn't even know what _it_ is truly like, only that somewhere in his life, he got fucked up, and that pain might make him into a circle of hurt if he doesn't stop it.

And like that, Erik's shoulder fall. “I want you."

Charles is sure he’s never felt worse after winning. It doesn’t even feel like it should. It doesn't feel right, even though it is. It doesn't feel good, even though it's what must happen, even though _it is_ good, and even though he might be saving both Erik and himself.

"Just leave, Erik. Just, please, go."

And maybe Erik wasn't ever the problem. Maybe Charles was the bullet from the start. 

He makes sure the door locks behind him.

* * *

Thinking about Erik becomes a past time. 

Hands, and sweat, and the smell of sex. The trembling words, "I've never done this before", and a small voice in the back of Charles head saying, _that's what cheaters say._

"I screwed up my life for a shag," he says to Angel while they're moving his few possessions out of student housing. She puts her fag out on his empty pizza carton and sighs. Smiles crookedly at him. Carelessly throws an introduction to 18th century German politics into a moving box. 

"The way you fuck, it was inevitable," she says. 

There are, he decides, downsides to being sexually liberated. 

Still, the thought gnaws at him, and won't leave him alone. "Did I fuck my whole life up? Did I miss my chance?" _Goddamn this mind_. "Angel, I don't know what to do."

"Honey." 

Her sympathetic face is terrifying. 

"Honey, that's not how it works."

He sits, leans his head against an empty wall, and closes his eyes. "How does it work, then?"

"You don't get _one_ chance." She nudges his foot gently with hers, calls him back to the present. "Have you talked to Sean lately?" 

"We live two doors from each other. Of course I've talked to Sean lately." He flicks her foot with his fingers and casts about for a fag, figuring he won't find one.

"No," she says. "Have you _talked_ to Sean _lately_?"

"Changing the intonation doesn't do anything for me."

Angel looks like she is seriously considering wringing his neck.

"What?" He says and pushes a box of books into her arms. "Stop glaring at me. I've got to run to the shop for fags."

And so it is. The part of him that doesn't care about Erik's wife and Erik's child, Erik's life that isn't in a stuffy office at an average university, battles without pause for the part of him that cannot let go of the thought that Erik - resents - or even blames, or perhaps, lives with one foot out the door of such a perfect but _confining_ life - it will not stop churning. Tumbling over and over and over inside his head, all while he prepares to leave that part of him behind. There is no alternative, after all, and there is no point.

So, he does what he always does.

He falls into Sean's bed - his thin mattress, his slack sheets, his one pillow, and his thin, freckled arms - when all his possessions are packed into Alex's van and he quite honestly could've slept in the car, and it's late, and Angel has looked at him meaningfully all day.

But he can't focus. Sean is nothing like Erik, but Erik still sneaks into Charles's mind like a broken record scratching its way in his conscious, until all he can think about is Erik in the morning with a porcelain mug and auburn hair glowing in the light and it's summer and the breeze is just barely there. Until Sean's hands in his hair as he takes him in his mouth feel _just_ like Erik's, and it reminds him of the way Erik touched him as if he wanted to, not even just in bed, but by the table, by the door on his way out, in the bathroom, sticky and gross and so far from perfect that Charles feels bile rise in the back of his throat. As if Erik wanted to trace every cigarette burn on his arms and connect the dots without even knowing what they were. Like he wanted to _understand_ Charles.

And that's when, to amplify his shame, and the rage, and the horrible fucking _loss_ of the entire thing, and every burning emotion that hollows him out, he lets go of Sean and starts sobbing onto bony his shoulder in the dark.

"Whoa, man." Sean grabs his arm in alarm, tries to look at his face even though Charles won't let him. "You okay?"

He nods, fervently, but can't stop as Sean quickly disentangles his limbs from Charles and moves away, gets up. He can feel his face burning: he might be having an anxiety attack, he's naked, and his nose is running - and he can't shake the knowledge that he _deserves this_. That somewhere between the taking and the losing he committed a sin so atrocious as to be worthy of _this_ , right here, the ugly, wet punishment for wanting.

"Here, man, have a tissue." A probing hand, and Sean naked, too, holding out a paper handkerchief, looking - fine. Like this happens to him sometimes. Nodding, and saying, "I'll get you some water."

The shock of it is almost enough to stem the flow, but when Sean returns, water in hand, and baking chocolate in the other, Charles can't stop shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and blows his disgusting nose.

Sean just looks surprised. "For what? Here, have a bite. I was going to make hobnobs before, but I ran out of eggs."

Charles can only stare. "That's not..."

It doesn't matter, does it. He draws another tissue from the packet and pulls the sheets a bit higher.

Sean waits, then shrugs. "Do you want me to put on a movie? It's chill if you want to cry a bit more."

"Chill," he can't help but echo.

Sean shrugs again, and carefully reaches out to wipe at the wetness under Charles's left eye. "Yeah."

In the morning, Sean lends him a fresh t-shirt, and in the kitchen proclaims that he's making, "A full English, with dry eggs like you want it."

Charles sits on a chair and thinks. How, he asks himself, can a person be so caught up in his own head that he misses this - how had he not seen it? He mustn't, he concludes as he twirls a fork between numb fingers, be a very good person, and he feels like apologising for his sullen silences, his dirty tissues on Sean's floor, his non-explanations. All his bullshit that no one has ever held him accountable for.

But he doesn't. He stares at Sean's back by the stove and says instead, "I really like you," and it feels like being brave. He watches as Sean's red cheeks turn near purple.

"Yeah. I like you, too," says Sean. "Doofus. Eat your eggs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go before the finishing line. Again, _thank you_ for the wonderful comments. You guys are the best.


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